Are the People of Egypt Available for Freelance Democracy Building?

Now that the people of Egypt have successfully ended the Mubarak regime, I'm wondering if they are available for freelance work.

For example, I am thinking of a nation whose capital is home to over 600,000 people, none of whom are represented by a voting member of their national legislature.

It is a country where about 16 per cent of the population is given control over half the seats in the upper house of that legislature - and can effectively block what a majority of citizens want. (Actually, it's worse than that because a single legislator in that House can block legislation, and not even a majority can insist on a vote.)

It's a country where the right to vote is not even in the national constitution. Its Supreme Court actually said that no one in the country has a constitutional right to vote for its president.

Of course, there are other ways of catapulting democracy. You can invade, as we did in Iraq. But when I consider the price tag for that effort, in both money and human life, the Egyptian plan looks way better.

And the country I'm thinking of is not even a dictatorship. If the Egyptians have 18 days to work their democratic genius, they could probably institute democracy in half that time and grab a week for a well-deserved vacation.